Barb's surgery, Gary's accident and the snow!

I have been needing a hysterectomy for about 6 years now. I have had stage 1 cancer cells in my uterus and on my cervix. But we didn't want it done until we were done having kids. And of course it has taken 6 plus years and then Brynley finally came. So now that she is here and we are D-O-N-E having kids we got the move on to get me signed up to have a hysterectomy done.

My Mom came up once again on Wednesday to help with the kids. She will stay until I am able to take over with Brynley. I am assuming she will be here until Wednesday morning...we are playing it by ear. The kids have been spoiled rotten with games, treats and freedom to do things LOL...they love when Grandma is here!

The weeks leading up to my surgery I frantically got ALL of my Christmas shopping done "just in case" I ended up being down longer than we thought. So all the shopping is done and we are ready for Christmas. This is my favorite time of year...all the smells, beautiful decorations, music and the feeling that is everywhere...I love it!

I had the surgery this past Thursday, November 3 at 8am at the Peter Laugheed Hosptial. The surgery took 3 hours and all went well...thank goodness! Kent waited all day for me and they wouldn't let him see me or talk to me as I was in the recovery room for about 6 hours since there were no beds available. They put the recovery room on shut down and no more surgeries were able to be done that day since there was just no more room for patients. My nurse was not a pleasant lady to say the least. So once she went on break I asked the new nurse if I could call Kent and tell him I am ok as he had heard nothing. She brought me the phone and even let him come see me for a few minutes. FINALLY around 5pm I got a room and then Kent was able to come help me get settled in there for the evening as I was supposed to stay the night.

Once I was settled in my room Kent told me that his brother Gary had been in a bad car accident Thursday morning when I was in surgery. He was in the business big white cube van on the highway going into Calgary when another white cube van t-boned him both going highway speeds. The other driver was at fault as he didn't see the stop sign. Gary is miraculously fine...sore, but otherwise fine! The guy that hit him not so much. The jaws of life had to cut him out of his vehicle and he was air lifted to the hospital...we don't know if he made it or not.

Here are some photos of the cube van Gary was driving and the aftermath inside it and out.

We are so incrediably thankful that Gary is OK! He is truly blessed to have been able to walk away from that accident the way he did. Because we know it could have been much much worse! He was being watched over that we know!

I ended up staying 2 nights and came home Saturday. All because the resident wasn't anwering his pages and wouldn't call the nurses back. I was supposed to go home on Friday but he never showed up to let me go so I had to stay another night. Well, when he finally showed up Saturday at 11am he said he would be right back and he never came back to release me. We waited 3 hours and then I finally just went to the front desk and told the head nurse I was checking myself out since he hadn't come back. She agreed with me totally and let me sign out.

It was a scary drive home with the roads being awful because of this horrible weather we got on Friday. Actually highway 2 was closed Saturday morning because of how bad it was out and all of the accidents. There were over 200 cars in the ditch along highway 2 from Calgary to Crossfield....CRAZY!! It happened to open back up right in time for Kent to come and get me. Calgary roads were the worst. The highway had been cleared and was actually pretty good. It is AMAZING how much snow there is. The kids have enjoyed all the snow digging snow forts on our deck where all the drifts are. Cole and a friend even went door to door asking to shovel out driveways and they earned some money.

Jeff came over and got our quad going that has a plow on the front of it to dig us all out while Kent had gone to get me. There was ALOT of snow. Thanks Jeff for doing that! Our cul-de-sac was trapped as the town plow wasn't digging us out only the main roads. So between our quad and another neighbors bob cat everyone got dug out.

It is so good to be home! I can now sleep as in the hospital it just is to noisey and they wake you up to often to do your vitals and give you your medicine. I am actually doing really well and feel good. Just can't move too quickly and I am not too lift anything heavy. Thank goodness for laproscopic surgery =) I only have 5 tiny incisions on my stomach. I have had 3 surgeries in one year's time...I think I am good now ha ha!

Snowed in...

Here is a photo from inside our house at the back door looking out onto the deck and into the backyard.

The snow was halfway up the fence...it was unreal!